Peter DuBois is one busy man. Not only is he the artistic director of Boston's Huntington Theatre Company, but he has helped the Perseverance Theatre (in ALASKA) gain financial and artistic stability, is a resident director and associate producer at the Public Theatre in New York, and is being heralded as one of the "hottest new-play directors" today.
Although his accomplishments are vast (and all spelled out in TCG's article here: http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/oct09/dubois.cfm), his approach to the Huntington Theatre Company has caught my eye.
As the new artistic director (he only took the job about a year ago), DuBois is just beginning to put his plans into action. One aspect of this plan is to utilize new technology...
DuBois assumed his post at the advent of the economic crisis, which has magnified the challenges facing many flagship regional theatres—challenges like reduced corporate funding, an aging core audience, the decline of traditional subscription-based ticket models, and shifting modes of communicating with audiences (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.).
DuBois would like to utilize the video screens in the Calderwood lobby to give audiences information about a show or, perhaps, to post text-messaged reactions about a performance. "Boston is a real intellectual town," he says. "People want to talk about ideas.
I think his decision to embrace social media and technology is a smart decision. Theatres can go one of two ways. They can avoid technology and "preserve" the essence of the theatre, or they can embrace it. Many theatres view cell phone (and now smart phones) as being disruptive to and having no place in the theatre.
However, today that technology is one of our main forms of communication. By embracing Twitter and Facebook as marketing and promotional means and text messaging and Twitter to gauge reactions, theatres can reach a new/broader/younger audience and form more personal relationships with their public.
Being a big advocate of businesses using social media, I'm very excited to see what DuBois is able to do with the Huntington Theatre Company.
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